Ganin had tried to make the platform but had just missed. He was dead now. Far below on the rocks.
Carter eased back away from the edge and clambered up over the peak and down the other side, where he descended the ladder back to the veranda.
Inside, he found a back corridor and maintenance area that led to a door that opened onto the platform.
He stepped out onto it and leaned over the edge to look down. There was nothing. Only the blood on the rail.
It was truly over. Ganin was dead. Now it was time for Innsbruck and Kobelev.
Carter turned, went back inside, and then followed the lobby back around to the cable car terminal. Aboard the car he picked up the telephone and called down to the woman in the terminal.
“Hello?” she shouted.
“The maintenance man for the car is busy. Would you please bring me down?” Carter said.
“What about the... other one?”
“He will be staying a while longer.”
“Yes, all right,” the woman said. And a moment later the car lurched and headed down.
Arkadi Ganin waited a full ten minutes after Carter had left, and then he painfully climbed back up the metal support struts that held the platform in place.
Two of his fingers were broken from the fall, and he was bleeding quite a bit from the stiletto wound.
It had been a very close call for him this time, all because of a jammed pistol and his own pride. Once again he had underestimated Carter. Only now he was at the advantage. Carter was convinced he was dead. The American would not think to look over his shoulder.
Ganin carefully climbed up the iron strut, then reached out for the edge of the platform. Slowly he managed to haul himself up beneath the rail, where he rolled over and lay on his back for a long time.
After the pain began to subside in his hand and in his shoulder, Ganin got shakily to his feet and tried the door. It was locked.
He looked up. Without hesitation he climbed carefully up on the rail, reached up, and caught the eaves of the roof with his fingers.
Pushing off with his feet, he managed to get a better grip, and with iron muscles and a will to match, he pulled himself up onto the roof.
A couple of minutes later he was climbing down the ladder to the veranda.
Inside, he located the restaurant’s office, where he searched for and found a first aid kit. He bandaged up his fingers, binding them around a pencil, and then awkwardly cleaned and bandaged his shoulder wound.
In the kitchen he jimmied open one of the refrigerators, where he found makings for a sandwich.
In another refrigerator he found the beer. Bringing his food and drink out to the main dining room, he sat down, put his feet up and took a deep drink.
He would give Carter a full hour to get away before he called for the cable car. He would have to take care of the woman below and then telephone Kobelev to tell him what had happened. The drive down to Innsbruck would take only an hour.
He could see Carter in his sights. He could almost feel the satisfaction it would give him to see the back of Carter’s head being blown off.
This time there would be no mistakes. This time pride would not get in the way. No matter what, Carter was a dead man.
Fourteen
Carter drove back into Garmisch-Partenkirchen and bought some bandages, gauze, and an antiseptic cream, then he went to his hotel. He cleaned up and afterward bandaged the wound in his side. It was superficial but painful.
In his mind’s eye he kept seeing Ganin going over the edge. He kept seeing the blood on the platform rail. It bothered him that he hadn’t actually seen the Russian’s body. But surviving such a fall was a total impossibility. Yet something nagged at the back of Carter’s brain. Some little thing he was overlooking. But he was too tired now to pursue it.
When he was ready he went downstairs to check out and pay his bill.
“Ah, Herr Carter,” the desk manager said. “You received a telephone message just a minute ago.” The man handed across a slip of paper.
Carter opened it and read the message. It was from Kobelev in Innsbruck: We’re waiting for your arrival... Lydia and I. Only wish dear Sigourney could have been here as well.
Kobelev couldn’t know that Ganin was dead. Not this soon. Yet he had to know that Ganin had come to the Zugspitze gunning for Carter.
The message had to be nothing more than Kobelev covering all the angles. On the chance that Carter either killed Ganin or somehow escaped, this message would be one more incentive to lure him to Innsbruck.
“Is something wrong, Herr Carter?” the manager was asking.
Carter looked up. “On the contrary,” he said, forcing a smile. “Did the caller leave a return number?”
“Nein, mein Herr. I’m afraid not.”
“It doesn’t matter. But if he should happen to call back, tell him I’m on my way.”
“Of course, sir,” the clerk said.
“Danke,” Carter said, and he left the hotel, climbed into his car, and headed southeast this time, back up into the mountains toward the Austrian border at Schamitz, barely fifteen miles away.
Sooner or later the carnage at the top of the Zugspitze would be discovered. It was important that he be out of the country before then. He was reasonably sure the woman clerk would remember him, and it wouldn’t take the police very long to track him back to the hotel.
Once he got to Innsbruck he was going to have to ditch the car. Keeping it would make it too easy for the Austrian police to catch up with him.
Carter was tired, and it seemed as if every bone in his body ached. He had begun the assignment without fully recuperating from the last. And he had collected his share of bumps and bruises during the past few days.
Ganin was dead. That thought kept running over and over again in his mind. Surely Kobelev would not be alone in Innsbruck. He would have his lieutenants. His goons would be around him, and they would be especially alert once it was learned Ganin had been killed.
If Kobelev were dug in at his chalet, he would be impossible to approach without placing Lydia in extreme danger.
As Carter drove, a plan began to formulate in his mind. Fight fire with fire; play Kobelev at his own game with audacity and arrogance. In the open where anyone who cared to could watch.
Kobelev would be lured out of his rat’s nest just as he had lured Carter all across Europe.
At the border Carter’s papers were checked, and he had to purchase additional liability insurance in order to drive in Austria. On the other side he exchanged the last of his German marks and some American dollars for Austrian shillings, then continued through Seefeld and Zirl in a heavy snowstorm, arriving in the lovely town of Innsbruck by early afternoon.
To the north was the Nordkette range of the Alps, and to the south, the Tuxer range; the city nestled between them. Carter had been here before some years ago, and he remembered that on a clear day the view from Innsbruck’s main street, the Maria-Theresienstrasse, was magnificent.
Because of the early snowfall there was an air of excitement in the city. Soon the winter ski season would be in full swing, and the city would bustle with activity.
Parking his car downtown, Carter went to a couple of ski equipment and clothing shops, and outfitted himself with some very good equipment and expensive clothing.
Then he drove to the railroad station and checked his overnight bag and new purchases in several lockers. Finally, he drove the car back across town, where he parked it in a back lot at the university.
Carter caught a bus back to the station, where he retrieved his bags, then he stepped outside as if he had just arrived by train.